A Nigerian payments company Paystack has been acquired by a US-based payments giant, Stripes.
The deal is rumoured to be for over $200 million.
For many in the Nigerian tech ecosystem, it was just a matter of time before this happened.
Founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi. Paystack sought to solve the challenge most Nigerians face when it comes to online payment transactions in Africa.
By seamlessly connecting all multi-channel payment options with merchants across the country, it enabled them to accept payments from around the world, via credit card, debit card, and direct bank transfer on web and mobile.
This got the one-year-old startup into US-based seed-stage accelerator, Y Combinator where it received 120,000 US dollars in funding and access to global investors.
Later that year, it raised a seed funding of 1.3 million US dollars from Tencent, Comcast Ventures, Singularity Investments, Michael Seibel, Justin Kan, Jason Njoku’s SPARK.ng, Olumide Soyombo among other investors.j
But it was in 2018 Paystack put everyone on notice as it raised 8 million Dollars in Series A funding. With participation from global payments company, Visa, US-based accelerator, Y Combinator, and Tencent, it was Stripe, a similar payments company based in the US, who led the round.
Three years after launching, this brought the company’s total funding to a little over $10 million. And since then, the company hasn’t raised a follow-up round.
So far, Paystack now has more than 60,000 businesses using its platform and is looking to expand beyond Nigeria and Ghana where it currently operates.
According to the founders of Stripe, the company was looking to continue investing in product development, further global expansion and strategic initiative
The billion-dollar startup has been strategically investing in similar startups around the world. Having invested in Paystack (Africa) two years ago, it recently invested in Paymongo, a payments startupin the Philippines (Asia) last month.
For its global expansion into Africa, Paystack presented the perfect acquisition opportunity. But while this is the biggest acquisition deal to come out of sub-Saharan Africa and Stripe’s largest acquisition till date, both companies will continue to operate independently.
